Discovery work and research confirmed what the Flagler College team had long suspected; their website was no longer serving its audiences well, and was beset by issues including a confusing navigation, a high bounce rate, and unimpressive visuals and branding. Users described their struggle to find information about programs and financial aid with words like ‘puzzled’ and ‘confused’ — and a poor mobile experience only made things worse.
Kanopi Studios was brought in to overhaul the content strategy, design, and back-end. A collaborative approach to discovery resulted in extensive research upfront, including reworked personas, content audits, user testing, surveys, and competitive analysis. We applied all our learnings to create wireframes that focused on the pathways from the home page, so the finished designs would get visitors where they needed to go — without having to rely on the navigation. We used storytelling to engage the reader, and made clearer pathways to avoid confusion.
The Flagler College team now has a website with a fresh design that’s youthful and confident. It breaks the mold from the average, more restrained college website — yet it’s still tastefully balanced and doesn’t neglect clarity or utility. And from a performance point of view, the updated back-end resulted in an improved page load speed, keeping site visitors happy and engaged as they explore the new design.
Administrators have complete control over the site like never before; they can now add and change components, structure, and visual elements as needed. All content is tagged and categorized, with every piece of Flagler content now serving a purpose and with its own specific success metric.
